


Freedom

by Murmures1234



Series: Terror Inside Companion Pieces [7]
Category: Homeland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 03:47:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18086834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murmures1234/pseuds/Murmures1234
Summary: In which Carrie finds out a little bit of Fara's heroism.





	Freedom

In this AU: Carrie asks Quinn what finally pushed him to leave. Peter tells tales of Fara’s heroism. 2 years after Fara’s letter. Frannie is 2 and a 1/2  
The late summer sun had gone down a while ago. Frannie had gone down to bed a while ago too. And now Carrie, fresh out of hospital a couple of weeks ago was finally feeling some semblance of control over her medication. Carrie was sat in the arms of the man she loved, in front of the fire. The lack of traffic, the beautiful stars. Everything about the cottage made her happy. 

In fact, Life couldn’t get much more perfect. 

Peter had taken Frannie hunting for bugs for most the afternoon. They’d got back to find Carrie had cooked a beautiful bolognaise. They’d laughed, and smiled as the sun had gone down. Frannie had ended up with spaghetti in her hair (she was a messy child). 

It was magical. 

Peter had put Frannie to bed. Part of that made Carrie sad, she knew she couldn’t help having missed out so much, she couldn’t help her condition. But she’d missed so much, and that made her sad. At the same time though, she loved watching Peter be a father. 

Peter, a cat with 9 lives, when you thought about it really. 

And by god, it was beautiful watching him live again. 

It made her sad she’d missed so much of that too. Watching him grow, and enjoy the peace he’d craved so much. Watch him enjoy being a father.   
So she just sat in the corridor, listening to Peter’s soft, lilting voice as he told Frannie tales of far-off lands. It was amazing, listening to him. She knew he was weaving tales of the lands he’d been too, like he’d forgotten all of the horror and just remembered the vibrant colours, the crazy noise of the markets, the smell of spices and street food. 

Like all he remembered was the hope those lands had. 

She wished that was all she remembered too. Not the smell of blood. The noise of a bomb. 

Peter Quinn was a remarkable man. 

He dimmed the light and shut the door on Frannie’s room before he caught sight of Carrie sat on the floor in the corridor. A smile grew across his face, his dimples becoming clearer. The sparkle in his eyes grew every moment he spent with that little girl. 

Like little Frannie was teaching him to live again. 

“She asleep?” She asked softly, taking his outstretched hand and pulling herself to her feet. 

Huge, strong, warm arms were around her, cradling her. She felt soft breath on her shoulder, like he was breathing her in. 

In reality she was breathing him in too. 

He smelt of home. 

“Sparco.” He said, a smile still on his face

“Come on, it’s our time now,” he said, pulling her back towards the door, the outside. The fire, the bottle of whiskey and the snacks.   
So they sat outside, Carrie snuggled up to Peter Quinn. It still blew her mind that they’d ended up together after everything that had happened. That such an incredible man wanted to be with her. 

Especially given all her shit. Her problems. 

She was still amazed, that such an incredible man loved her. 

God she’d missed him in hospital. 

And while outside, they’d talked of anything and everything. Hopes and dreams. Carrie had spoken about her fears, hospital again. Loosing everything. 

“You’ll never loose me Carrie,” he’d said, squeezing her tighter. 

“I nearly did though.” She said. It was obvious instantly, what she was talking about. 

_Islamabad_

“I still have nightmares about it.” Carrie said again, softly. “About losing you.” 

Peter squeezed her tighter. 

“I didn’t want to lose you. I thought I was going to lose you.” Carrie said, her voice breaking. 

“Let’s not talk about sad things now Carrie,” Peter said. His voice breaking, not trusting himself to speak. 

Carrie pulled his arm across her chest. 

“I’m so glad I found you. I know you weren’t at the time, but I’m so glad I did. We’d lost so many. I just didn’t want to lose you. I didn’t know why, now I do. I never got why they let you go after it though, you’d gone AWOL. The agency doesn’t like that. How’d you swing that?” 

She turned around to look at him. Peter looked very distressed. 

“Shit Carrie, do we have to talk about this now?” He said, struggling to make eye contact. 

She put a hand softly on his cheek. 

“No, we don’t have to. But…. I think you want too. You’ve been having nightmares too. About Fara. Haqqani. Islamabad. It’s the anniversary soon. Talking’s hard, but it helps. I promise. It took me a long time to realise it. You know how much I still struggle with it.” 

She snuggled back into his side, wanting to give him the space to talk without having to cope with eye contact. 

There was silence, for 2, maybe 5 minutes. But eventually Peter started. 

“My big issue, is I don’t know a lot of what happened to me over the years.”   
A shaky breath out, and a pause. 

“My memory is a bit shot, you know that. Then it… it all comes in waves. I’m ok when I think about the recent stuff. Smells keep me here. But the past, it’s kind of blurry.” 

Carrie interlaced her hands with Peters as she snuggled tight up to him. His arm over her side now. 

“But Haqqani… it wasn’t the first time I’d run into him. Me and Rob were captured by him when we I was younger. Bad intel, shit show of a mission. I don’t remember a lot of it. It’s blurry, very blurry. I know Rob remembers more. It’s why he lost it with me after I refused to go Syria. That mission I turned down, right after we got together... Haqqani was one of the targets. We escaped eventually, went on a really big fucking walk. Self-extract. And then we’d barely touched back down on US soil before the Hussein deployment came up, so we went back out to the fucking desert. 

We’d been on his tail for weeks, so close and yet so far. We knew we were closing in. Closing the net. The one morning, this little 7 year old suicide bomber nearly blew us all to kingdom come.” 

Tears were rolling down his cheek now. 

“She was the daughter of our interpreter. Haqqani was trying to help move Saddam out the country. Our intel was blown, our interpreters identity had accidently become pretty fucking public knowledge. I’d tried to make Dar see that interpreters for SF should have security for their family but he said there wasn’t the budget. So Haqqani abducted our interpreters daughter, held her prisoner, tortured her, assaulted her, and then made her walk up to camp with a fucking bomb tied around her to kill her dad. She was Fara Sherazi.” 

“Shit,” Carrie said, sitting up all of a sudden and pulling Peter into a hug. 

“That’s why I lost the plot on Islamabad Carrie,” He said, fast, into her shoulder, mumbling, thoughts all over the place. “I’m sorry I hurt you in the process, but I was just so angry. That man is _so_ evil Carrie. I thought it was worth anything to kill him, anything. But when you were stood on that bomb, I knew it wasn’t worth that. I couldn’t cancel out the fact I loved you with the hate I felt for him. But that was why I lost the plot. He’d killed Fara. Even all these years later I couldn’t keep her safe. I felt so fucking guilty. It was like I’d put the knife in her myself.”

A shaky breath slowed his words. Carrie was rubbing this brave mans’ shoulder. 

“When Haqqani had showed up in Islamabad, she was so brave. I knew she was scared, I knew she remembered everything. But she wanted to get him, she wanted to make him pay. I wanted to make him pay. But I couldn’t kill you. So I got out, extracted to Astrid’s’ and she put me back on a commercial flight to the US. I got off the plane, thinking I would be met with a sudden end almost as soon as I landed. The last guy that did what I did they took out at an airport. But I didn’t care anymore, I’d failed at everything. Everything apart from keeping you alive. But when I got off a flight, I was met by some SF bloke with a letter, not with a gun. I don’t know who the fuck he was, I’ve never met him before or since. But rhe letter told me that Fara had found some dirt on Dar, and she blackmailed him into letting me go free.” 

He couldn’t tell Carrie the whole story of his recruitment, not yet. 

“That’s how I survived leaving the CIA. Because of Fara.” 

He looked up at her, all of a sudden a smile on his face, looking almost alien against the tears of his eyes. 

“She made me tell you too. In the letter. She said the only thing she wanted in thanks, was for me to be honest with you. She wrote it in her death-note because she knew I’d chicken out otherwise.” 

Carrie reached over to the bottle of Whiskey, and poured two small measures out, one for her, one for Peter. 

A small smile on her face, she passed one to Peter and they toasted the girl who’d brought them together. 

“To Fara,” they both said, in sync, looking up to the stars. 

Carrie had been right, talking helped. 

They’d had a magical rest of their holiday, heading back to the city in time for the Islamabad memorial. 

The peace hadn’t lasted. Carrie was back in hospital the week after the Islamabad anniversary, having tried to jump of a nearby bridge in a sudden rapid-cycling manic episode, thinking she could fly. 

It would be a long road for them, Peter thought, the first night alone again. 

But the voice of the little girl he’d come to love as a sister echoed in his head. 

“But nothing easy is ever worth doing Peter.” Fara had told him once.


End file.
